Reportedly the drives that died were DVD ***Burners**** , RIGHT???? I mean
I hadn't read any DVD player only drives dying?

the drives are cheap and easy, hell before I got GTL (meaning before I had
starforce) I lost 2 CD drives in one year, (only raced Papy games and some
MS games).

"RocketMan" > wrote in message
...
> Thanks very much for the info.
> This may be a silly question, but I'll ask it anyway! Is there the
> possibility that SF will affect (damage?) all DVD drives in the PC, or
> just the drive that it is installed from? My PC has two DVD burners - one
> for general use (the DVD drive I wanted was out of stock, and the DVD
> burner was only $20 more), and one dedicated to DVD burning. Is it
> possible that if I have any problems it will only affect the DVD burner I
> use for installing programs?
> If I am forced to replace a damaged DVD drive, will StarForce also damage
> the replacement?
> Will SF have any effect on my burning software, i.e. stop it from
> working?
> Apologies if these are stupid questions.
> Thanks again.
>
> --
>
> RocketMan
> " > wrote in message
> oups.com...
>> Here's what I understand about the issue - I'll be lazy and not post
>> links, but any google search on starforce should yield tons of info:
>>
>> 1) Ring 0 access - because Starforce uses a system driver that appears
>> like an IDE disk driver, it runs at a highly priviledged level in the
>> system that could potentially be exploited by malicious software. This
>> has been noted with multiple copy protection/DRM packages. So far
>> no-one has demonstrated or seen an exploit 'in the wild' AFAIK, but
>> that doesn't mean it isn't possible. Note that this is different from
>> the poorly-written Sony rookit. The Sony DRM package created a *huge*
>> security hole by creating a directory that was completely hidden from
>> normal system operations. A malicious program could drop files in the
>> same dir and there would be almost no way to detect it. The Sony
>> rookit also created a device chain that could bluscreen your PC if the
>> DRM driver was disabled.
>>
>> 2) Dead DVD writers. This appears to be the most common complaint.
>> How truly frequent this occurs is unknown (some fraction is probably
>> conicidental normal hardware failure), but some reasonably respected
>> netizens have posted that they have had DVD writers crap out after
>> loading SF-protected games. The problem is partly Microsoft's - what
>> appears to be the problem is the "auto-stepdown" function of IDE
>> drivers in WinXP. What happens is WinXP will automatically slow down
>> drive access as it encounters read errors on IDE devices, starting with
>> the Ultra-DMA modes, slowing all the way down to PIO modes. IMHO this
>> was one of those stupid "Microsoft knows better than you" decisions -
>> the OS never reports an error to the user or allows the behavior to be
>> changed (although XP SP2 apparently slows the step-down counter so it
>> is less likely to occur). I have personally experienced this in the
>> early days of XP (not related to Starforce). What seems to kill some
>> DVD writers is they are not designed to operate in PIO modes, and the
>> step down to PIO permanently damages the drives. Starforce was stupid
>> here in that they could have written the virtual driver as a SCSI
>> device (like Alcohol 120%'s drives) and avoided this problem
>> completely.
>>
>> 3) Starforce's business practices - Instead of recognizing there might
>> be a problem and trying to get info from users to fix it, they called
>> anyone who reported problems hackers/pirates/script kiddies. They
>> setup a ridiculous contest where they would pay anyone $10000 who could
>> come to Russia (on thier own dime) and reproduce the problem on
>> Starforce's own hardware. When nobody took them up on such a stupid
>> offer they proclaimed that it meant there was no problem. They have
>> also done such nasty things as posting links on thier own forums to
>> pirated software (Gal Civ II, I think).
>>
>> Myself - I avoid 1+2 by having a dedicated gaming PC that I do not use
>> for regular internet browsing, nor do I do my DVD burning on this PC.
>> 3 is a matter of personal decision. I abhor the way they do business,
>> but support Simbin and thier work for the sim market enough to hold my
>> nose and enjoy the hell out of GTR and GTL. I don't think the
>> developers make those decisions - that's more in the hands of the
>> publishers.
>>
>> Hope I got all that right!
>> Kendt
>>
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